Title

Time smoking a picture

Artist

William Hogarth

About

This is Hogarth's most consciously learned image, using quotations from classical texts to support his challenge to the gentlemanly taste for old and darkened Italian paintings. From the 1730s onwards he railed consistently against the taste for dubious old master paintings authenticated by dealers and 'dark masters'. Time's scythe pierces the canvas, making the point that time is not a beautifier but a destroyer.